Sony Playstation: First Party Studios & their Current Projects

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What I want/Will not happen
Sony London - The Getaway III (no love from Sony. Stuck with move/VR demos)
Polyphony - Tourist Trophy 2/GT7 TT DLC
Evolution - WRC (Sony is on a mission to reduce this studio + not sure how expensive is wrc license at the moment)
Last but not least - give Colony Wars/Warhawk/Socom/Wipeout to competent studios (since original ones are dead) and please revive them Sony!

I still would like to see a further expansion of SCE Studios. I think they would be particularly smart to invest in Canada and China also. Most importantly, drop the AAA mega-budget insistence and embrace some B-budget and smaller scale titles.

Member

Lots of PS3 games missing from some devs there. Aside from that, awesome work! Can't wait to see the projects from the Partner Studios.

It's ironic to see how people were easily discarding Japan Studios like 2 years ago, and now they seem to be doing the best work (counting out Naughty Dog of course). Very excited for Gravity Daze and TLG.

Banned

Lots of PS3 games missing from some devs there. Aside from that, awesome work! Can't wait to see the projects from the Partner Studios.

It's ironic to see how people were easily discarding Japan Studios like 2 years ago, and now they seem to be doing the best work (counting out Naughty Dog of course). Very excited for Gravity Daze and TLG.

Member

I still would like to see a further expansion of SCE Studios. I think they would be particularly smart to invest in Canada and China also. Most importantly, drop the AAA mega-budget insistence and embrace some B-budget and smaller scale titles.

I think an expansion into Canada would be wise, considering the tax breaks they used to give to developers there. However, I believe they made big cuts to those breaks, and now do them when the developer integrates Canadian culture or something. I could be confusing it with other governments' policies though.

afaik, they only publish those games, their collaborations started on PS3 when Sony didn't allow self-publishing yet, so Santa Monica started publishing them on PSN for them, & it just stayed that way on PS4 because that's how it's always been, besides, indie studios usually get a bigger budget & marketing support from Santa Monica.

They're not like Japan Studio where they help with the actual development of the games.

Small note - but the studios aren't named "Sony Bend Studio" or "Sony San Diego Studio" but rather "SCE Bend Studio" and "SCE San Diego Studio".

Remember, Sony and Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) are different entities, meaning that Sony Bend could be making toasters and televisions as opposed to SCE Bend who is specifically a content creator for Playstation.

Member

Small note - but the studios aren't named "Sony Bend Studio" or "Sony San Diego Studio" but rather "SCE Bend Studio" and "SCE San Diego Studio".

Remember, Sony and Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) are different entities, meaning that Sony Bend could be making toasters and televisions as opposed to SCE Bend who is specifically a content creator for Playstation.

Member

afaik, they only publish those games, their collaborations started on PS3 when Sony didn't allow self-publishing yet, so Santa Monica started publishing them on PSN for them, & it just stayed that way on PS4 because that's how it's always been, besides, indie studios usually get a bigger budget & marketing support from Santa Monica.

They're not like Japan Studio where they help with the actual development of the games.

They can't do anything new that isn't being covered massively by other studios, the inFamous games are very unique, open world superhero games are very rare in today's market. What genre can they do? TPS? FPS? RPG? MMO? Sports? Platformer? Driving game?

There's nothing like inFamous out there, while Second Son was a let down compared to inFamous 2, that was the fault of that game specifically, not the IP or the genre, since the IP & the genre are both extremely unique.

inFamous 2 had a lively world, varying side quests, your choices did matter and they did make a difference in the end, it had only one power but it was massively more fleshed out than the 4 generic powers in Second Son, it had varying environments, user created content, a far better story, & the characters didn't just disappear abruptly, & you could actually become a supervillain in the end. The only thing SS did better was voice acting & graphics.

They just need to go back to the inFamous 2 format (complete with the comic book cutscenes), & expand on it with a bigger world, more choices, & even more varying side quests, & bring back the user created content. I wouldn't even mind a created character as the protagonist.

Member

15 years of innovative and diverse games have defined our studio's strong internal and external legacy. As we at Santa Monica Studio continue our odyssey ahead to develop great games for the PlayStation 4, both with our internal studio and our external dev partners, it seemed befitting to showcase all of our games within the framework of our new, unified studio logo.

The goal - create a flexible identity for all of our games, a united banner for all we do. The games we create at Santa Monica Studio become the very essence of who we are as a studio, and vice versa. Our games are the studios brand, and now our logo exemplifies who we are.

Our studio logo, with its bold, simple structure can become a frame to the world of our games, filled with elements of the game such as key colors, textures, game content and screenshots. When you see the new animated logo boot up with our next external dev games such as Fat Princess: Adventures, youll further understand how we crafted a mark that allows our games to visually become part of the brand.

Make sure to visit our GAMES section to learn about every game we've produced from our internal and exertnal development teams. You may find some surprising discoveries of games you never even knew we assisted on. These incredible PlayStation games have defined the first 15 years of our studio. #GreatnessAwaits for the next 15! Follow us

Member

afaik, they only publish those games, their collaborations started on PS3 when Sony didn't allow self-publishing yet, so Santa Monica started publishing them on PSN for them, & it just stayed that way on PS4 because that's how it's always been, besides, indie studios usually get a bigger budget & marketing support from Santa Monica.

They're not like Japan Studio where they help with the actual development of the games.

Member

About 25 people worked on Tearaway. I also imagine they probably outsourced some asset creation and such (as is the norm), but I can't find any specific quotes on that. I do remember reading or hearing about it though, back when the game first came out.

That doesn't take away from the fact that it's an impressive effort, however.

Member

They can't do anything new that isn't being covered massively by other studios, the inFamous games are very unique, open world superhero games are very rare in today's market. What genre can they do? TPS? FPS? RPG? MMO? Sports? Platformer? Driving game?

There's nothing like inFamous out there, while Second Son was a let down compared to inFamous 2, that was the fault of that game specifically, not the IP or the genre, since the IP & the genre are both extremely unique.

inFamous 2 had a lively world, varying side quests, your choices did matter and they did make a difference in the end, it had only one power but it was massively more fleshed out than the 4 generic powers in Second Son, it had varying environments, user created content, a far better story, & the characters didn't just disappear abruptly, & you could actually become a supervillain in the end. The only thing SS did better was voice acting & graphics.

They just need to go back to the inFamous 2 format (complete with the comic book cutscenes), & expand on it with a bigger world, more choices, & even more varying side quests, & bring back the user created content. I wouldn't even mind a created character as the protagonist.

Member

About 25 people worked on Tearaway. I also imagine they probably outsourced some asset creation and such (as is the norm), but I can't find any specific quotes on that. I do remember reading or hearing about it though, back when the game first came out.

That doesn't take away from the fact that it's an impressive effort, however.

Member

With external stuff, think of SMS like the North American version of Sony XDev, which handles external dev projects like Until Dawn, Resogun, LBP franchise, Murasaki Baby, Quantic Dream's projects, etc.

Member

What I want/Will not happen
Sony London - The Getaway III (no love from Sony. Stuck with move/VR demos)
Polyphony - Tourist Trophy 2/GT7 TT DLC
Evolution - WRC (Sony is on a mission to reduce this studio + not sure how expensive is wrc license at the moment)
Last but not least - give Colony Wars/Warhawk/Socom/Wipeout to competent studios (since original ones are dead) and please revive them Sony!

I'd rather them make something unique, instead of making something I can play from other studios.

It's fine if you don't like superhero stuff, but there's audience for that genre (especially comic book fans), & Sony's main differentiator from other platforms is that they make games that satisfy varying demographics, they don't focus on one demographic group like their competitors. There are people that own Playstation only for Japanese games (because it's the only viable platform for a huge amount of Japanese games), or only for MLB, or LBP...etc. Their exclusives usually don't have the same demographics (GAFers play everything, but I'm talking about the general consumer here).

I don't think Sony will suddenly change after three generations, they'll continue covering all the genres for the foreseeable future.

Member

I'd rather them make something unique, instead of making something I can play from other studios.

It's fine if you don't like superhero stuff, but there's audience for that genre (especially comic book fans), & Sony's main differentiator from other platforms is that they make games that satisfy varying demographics, they don't focus on one demographic group like their competitors. There are people that own Playstation only for Japanese games (because it's the only viable platform for a huge amount of Japanese games), or only for MLB, or LBP...etc. Their exclusives usually don't have the same demographics (GAFers play everything, but I'm talking about the general consumer here).

I don't think Sony will suddenly change after three generations, they'll continue covering all the genres for the foreseeable future.

You keep going on about how Sucker Punch have to do InFamous because it's unique and that there's nothing else they can do. They have already made three InFamous games and some extras, sometimes while the competition had Batman and Prototype but just because there might not be something like it that compares on the market, it doesn't mean Sucker Punch can't do something else.

It would be very refreshing seeing them take a break from InFamous and either create a new IP for Sony or do something with their other franchises.

Banned

Kind of sad that Santa Monica Studios has become one of the worse studios for Sony in term of AAA development this generation.
They "helped" with The Order, but the series was never their IP.
I don't think we will see anything from them until 2017, they are so behind the curve.
GOW is an old IP too =/.

And Guerilla probably now leads all WWS as the most efficient devs. Split into multiple teams to develop AAA IP titles and working on PSVR too.
Should give more funding to GG instead of SMS and just delay GOW to 2018-2020.